Blog

Earn affiliate income for your website

Posted 23rd March 2010 | Category: Web Marketing |

I just found out about a really simple website for generating affiliate income, although it will work best if you're a publisher, e.g. a blog, magazine or information resource. Skimlinks provides a clever bit of code that automatically inserts affiliate links into your content, so you can make money if someone clicks through.

You just write your content as normal, and when people use your website they'll automatically see links straight to the recommended shop or website. To be fair, you'll need to get a lot of visitors and clicks to earn a decent amount of money from affiliate advertising, but at least it's simple. Clever! Read more...

Cheaper web development rates

Posted 16th March 2010 | Category: Web Development |

I just wanted to let all our clients know that we are offering a reduced hourly rate on our maintenance work if you buy hours upfront.

Our standard hourly rate is £75 + VAT, but if you buy your hours upfront we will reduce our rate:

• Pay for 10 hours upfront and we'll charge £70 + VAT per hour
• Pay for 20 hours upfront and we'll charge just £65 + VAT per hour

These hours will then be applied as a credit to your account for any ad hoc work you need on your website. There is no limit on when you can use these hours, but they are non-refundable. Read more...

Create art in whatever you do

Posted 11th March 2010 | Category: Web Development |

I've just listened to a great podcast interview with Seth Godin, the renowned marketing expert. One thing in particular that stood out for me was his comment about creating art in whatever you do.

Godin's definition of art is an act of generosity - giving something more in your work that isn't needed, like Apple creating nice little features and design within their products. It's not technically needed, but it adds a gift to the customer that turns what you're doing into art. And whatever you're doing, there's an opportunity to do it better, be more passionate, or go the extra mile - not because you have to, but because it adds something to your work, and gives you a purpose beyond just making money. Read more...

Cheap recruitment software

Posted 6th March 2010 | Category: Web Development |

Over the years we have developed many recruitment systems for our clients. From basic systems for managing candidate details & CV's to more complicated systems that deal with the basic details for candidates, clients, contacts and vacancies as well as including vacancy application stages, secure access for clients and candidates, bookings, invoicing and reporting. For these bespoke recruitment solutions we have our very own micro site detailing these services and prices: Bluelinemedia recruitment solutions.

Through speaking with many recruitment companies we have noticed that the smaller or new start up agencies simply don't have the budget for a fully bespoke solution. Our idea was to come up with a system that these agencies could use for a small monthly fee while avoiding the larger costs of a bespoke system. Not only is the solution a cheaper alternative, but they can have access instantly as there is no development timescale involved.

Our solution apricothq.com gives agencies access to an online system where they can securely maintain their candidate, client, contact and vacancies records in one place. We are offering FREE access for 30 days and once expired you can pay to carry on using the system or simply just stop with no come backs. From as little as £25+vat per month you can have unlimited use of the system. Read more...

Sales without the selling

Posted 2nd March 2010 | Category: Company |

The best way to sell services is not to sell at all, but to offer help and advice around your expertise. Our approach has always been to listen first, then come back to our office and talk about the project with a colleague, before putting together a proposal of what we think will help.

By focussing on listening in the first instance, you can be completely objective about what a potential client needs and find out more about their business, so you've got a better chance of suggesting something that will really work. It also means you can make a proper judgement about whether you can really do the best possible job of helping that client.

Make yourself the expert, ask lots of questions, and the sales will follow. Read more...

Getting started with SEO

Posted 2nd March 2010 | Category: Web Marketing |

I recently stumbled across a document published by Google that describes how best to optimise sites for Google and other search engines. It is written from a novices point of view, but seems to summarise the basic concepts well. It also pretty much covers the starter SEO we apply for our clients and as such provides a useful explanation of what we will do for them.

You can find it here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. Read more...

Upload large files to a website

Posted 1st March 2010 | Category: Web Design |

Recently we had an issue where we needed to upload large document files through the browser. Uploading documents through the browser is normally limited to around 10 to 15MB using a simple HTML form and for most users that is sufficient. When documents are above this size the file upload will usually fail due to the upload timing out.

There are various methods to increase the maximum document size that can be uploaded through the browser but we did not know that htaccess could be used to allow large document uploads. We thought that FTP or Flash would be the only methods for uploading large files.

Then we discovered the following code that can be inserted into a htaccess file to enable much larger file uploads. In this example l have set it to allow for 500MB files: Read more...